Better Than Good

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Bedecked in my flowered Bible Story Lady hat, I pulled yet another stuffed animal out of my cavernous bag, attempting to teach a room full of three and four-year-olds the rudimentary building blocks of the Bible.

Today’s lesson was “God Made Animals.” How can you botch that, right?

So I was surrounded by piles of plush bunnies, doggies, kitty-cats, anteaters, squirrels, lions-and-tigers-and-bears-oh-my … you name the furry beast and it was probably there. The kids had grown wilder and crazier with the introduction of each critter until chaos reigned and I could no longer be heard above the den of little voices or seen among the flailing limbs rushing me to be the next volunteer to extract one of God’s four-legged creations out of my bag.

I felt like a quarterback being sacked over and over again.

Papa God should be pleased that His handiwork is so popular with the wee set.

Animal photos by my talented friend, Marian Crawford

But at the moment, I was not.

When I’d finally extracted myself from the bedlam and the boonfoggled teachers had restored some manner of order to the room, I thought to myself, as I made for the door, Well, that was an absolute disaster.

But my escape route was blocked by a teensy floppy-haired maverick in cowboy boots. The adorable tyke looked up at me with twinkling blue eyes and said, “Tank you Miss Debbie; that was bewwy, bewwy good!”

Suddenly, magically, my perspective changed and I saw the “failed, disastrous, chaotic” lesson from a preschooler’s perspective. It was fun. It grabbed my attention. It gave full credit to Papa God for a job well done (creating all those awesome animals). And it was bewwy, bewwy, good.

Hey, aren’t those the same words – sort of – that the Almighty used at the end of each chaotic day of creation? By dingies, they are: “God looked at what he had done, and it was good” (Genesis 1:18, CEV).

Bewwy, bewwy good, you might even say.

So dear BBFF (Blessed Blog Friend Forever), the next time you think you’ve made a miserable mess of things, remember this little story and take heart. What you view as failure may actually be, by someone else’s yardstick, bewwy, bewwy good.

I’d love to hear from you, BBFF. Won’t you share with me a time in your life when what you thought was a failed venture actually turned out to be a success?